Last week I talked to three separate prospects that rely on memos to communicate to employees. Yes, memos. All three embarrasingly mentioned how they actually use the didn't-you-get-the-memo joke.

What's more is that all three companies have big investments in SharePoint. But despite a few solid use cases where SharePoint helps manage high-maintenance documents, most Team Sites were fragmented wastelands avoided by most business users. I asked, "How do people find the information and experts they need to get their jobs done?" The common response: "There's no one, easy way to do it. It takes forever. Some people blast out emails, others pick up the phone. Whatever people do, they figure something out, but it's painful and doesn't scale. We end up reinventing the wheel and waste tons of time."

I can go on detailing painful details, but you get the picture. Traditional intranets, by and large, are failures. In many cases, then, people resort to email, and though email is good at sending a message to a colleague, it's awful for broad collaboration.

Sound familiar? Does your company rely on emailed memos? Is your intranet a soul-sucking wasteland? There's got to be a better way, right? As Director of Product Marketing at Jive, I'm tremendously biased =o) but there is a better way. And it's a proven way. We have myriad customers that use Jive to power their social intranet. But rather than read from a biased marketer, check out what we've learned, and what our customers have learned by grabbing our social intranet toolkit here. We'll also be kicking off a ten-part social intranet blog series where you can learn more about the Social Intranet directly from Jive experts, customers, and partners and experts.

What about your traditional intranet? What horror stories do you have? Are you still sending memos?